Abstract
The persistent high unemployment rate confronting South Africa, in particular among the youth, continues to be a cause of concern for all stakeholders including academic researchers dealing with labor market issues. As a contribution to efforts at finding solution to the unemployment challenge, the study sought to investigate the nature and causes of rural unemployment amongst the youth using data on a sample of 580 randomly and systematically selected youth from the four local municipalities in the Vhembe district of Limpopo province, South Africa. Binary logistic regression model was estimated to determine the socio-demographic, as well as economic factors that influence youth unemployment. Results of the binary logistic regression model showed that having received (skills) training and work experience were associated with reduced odds of being unemployed. This study highlights the importance of skills training opportunities, as well as apprenticeship in mitigating the unemployment challenge among the youth. The provision of necessary training infrastructure and funding for skills training, as well as work integrated learning and extended career specific internship programs to help to equip South African youth with work experience are major recommendations from this study. Keywords: unemployment, youth, binary logistic regression, Vhembe district, South Africa. JEL Classification: J64
Highlights
The problem of high youth unemployment is a global phenomenon (Lam, Leibbrandt and Mlatsheni, 2008; Zinhnwe, 2012 and Yarima, 2014)
The Likelihood ratio test was, performed to test the overall significance of all the coefficients in the model and our results indicate that the overall model is significant at the 0.01 level according to the Model chi-square, implying that, as a whole, the independent variables have a significant contribution to predict the response variable
The aim of the study was to investigate the determinants of youth unemployment in Vhembe district of Limpopo province South Africa and suggest way forward for mitigating the joblessness challenge
Summary
The problem of high youth unemployment is a global phenomenon (Lam, Leibbrandt and Mlatsheni, 2008; Zinhnwe, 2012 and Yarima, 2014). ILO (2010) reports that the global youth unemployment reached its highest level in 2010, pointing out that out of 620 million economically active youth aged 15 to 25 years, 81 million were unemployed at the end of 2009. This is the highest number ever recorded and it is 7.8 million more than in 2007. Unemployment among the youth has been and continues to be South Africa’s primary policy challenge (Bernstein, 2008) It has become a contentious issue, as the rate is much higher than that of adults in most countries of the world (Dale, 2014). According to Statistics South Africa (2015), youth unemployment rates for South Africa between 2008 and 2015 were 32, 7% in 2008, 33.7% in 2009, 35.7% in 2010, 36.1% in 2011, 35.8% in 2012, 36.2% in 2013, 36.1% in 2014 and 36.9% in 2015
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